On the evening of Monday January 3, the English department hosted a showing of “The Most Reluctant Convert,” a film reprisal of C.S. Lewis’ partial autobiography “Surprised By Joy.” Students from across campus gathered in Sanderson 215 for a night of dining on popcorn with garlic salt, sipping earl grey tea and seeing the life of a great Christian writer portrayed on the “big screen.”
Dr. Heather Hess orchestrated the entire event, saying, “First, it was really a delight to host this event, and I can’t overstate my gratitude to the Fellowship for Performing Arts for giving us the permission and the means of streaming the film. I’m also deeply indebted to Dr. Macallister for her leadership and the English department's generous funding to make the event happen. As a new member of the faculty, I felt privileged to be entrusted with something like this, and I was thrilled with the number of students, staff and friends of the college that came to enjoy the film!”
The film was artfully done, portraying an older Lewis strolling through the stages of his life, discussing his progression from innocence to experience to higher innocence. It portrays Lewis’s evolution from boyhood to becoming a professing atheist. Then, through the people in his life, how reason and the search for knowledge leads him to God and then Christ.
Regarding the film itself, Dr. Hess said, “This was my first time seeing the film, and it’s given me a lot to chew on. Like so many others, I was entranced by Max McLean’s performance as C. S. Lewis. I’ve spent a lot of time with Lewis’s written words, and I feel I know him pretty well. Hearing and seeing McLean give voice and body to familiar, beloved Lewisian phrases and ideas did actually leave me with a unique sense that I’d spent the evening in Lewis’s company. So, between my fellow viewers and the film’s subject, it was a beautiful reminder of the fellowship of God’s visible and invisible church--in particular places and times, and across time and space.”
For those who were not able to attend the showing, the film is available to stream online and highly recommended by the students who attended.